Personal Status Updates! (Page 11 of 13)

I haven't seen the show. I'm not even sure where to find it...

quick search...

Ah. Yeah, I don't watch much Bravo. But reading the description, it sounds a bit like The Grinder.

So, I bought SLIDERS: THE COMPLETE SERIES on DVD when it first came out. But recently, I wanted to show my niece "The Guardian" despite her reluctance and was stymied when the DVD was scratched! I think that paper sleeve container simply doesn't protect the discs. To replace it, I... well, I don't want to buy SLIDERS: THE COMPLETE SERIES on DVD once again.

It looks like I could get SLIDERS: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON off eBay for ten bucks. But... I feel so angry towards Season 3. Even in recent years, it has found new ways to offend: in 2016, SLIDERS REBORN was the *second* highest viewed section on EarthPrime.com. That's right, my writing, my scripts, were second in popularity only to... the third season episode guide on the site. It rankled and offended so deeply and I feel everything in me crying out in rage when I go to buy SLIDERS: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON. What to do, fellow fans?

From the instant messaging archives:

TRANSMODIAR: "Are you really okay with me rewriting your episode reviews?"

ME: "I really like all these jokes you add to my reviews. I think you should rewrite everything I write."

TRANSMODIAR: "Just sent you a new review, check it out."

ME: "Sure, just let me dry off first."

TRANSMODIAR: "Dry off?"

ME: "Yes, I'm wet."

TRANSMODIAR: "Why are you wet?"

ME: "I was in the bath."

TRANSMODIAR: "Good to know."

**

TRANSMODIAR: " -- and I've set a schedule on the site for the next round of stuff, take a look."

ME: "Sure, but I'm not logged into the CMS on my tablet; let me get out of the bath first."

TRANSMODIAR: "Wait -- you're NAKED right now?"

ME: "Yeah, I always take a bath this time of the day and catch up on my messages."

TRANSMODIAR: "Okay then."

**

TRANSMODIAR: " -- and I said I wanted it in my personnel file that that person coming after me was COMPLETELY CRAZY."

ME: "You've led quite a life."

TRANSMODIAR: "Did you ever read my political blog?"

ME: "I bookmarked it on my laptop; let me get out of the bath and I'll re-read it. I remember you having a lot of truther style conspiracies."

TRANSMODIAR: "Again with the bath!"

ME: "What?"

TRANSMODIAR: "I do NOT need to know that you're in the bath! I don't need to know that you're naked when we're instant messaging!"

ME: "Oh."

TRANSMODIAR: "Oh, check out the website preview for the REBORN section in the redesigned site layout when you're dry and wearing clothes."

ME: "I'm looking at it now and crying."

TRANSMODIAR: "What? WHY ARE YOU CRYING?"

ME: "The SLIDERS REBORN section. It's beautiful. It's a dream come true. Thank you."

TRANSMODIAR: "You're welcome. Look, we can talk about SLIDERS REBORN and whatever you want; just don't tell me when you're taking a bath. I don't need to know."

ME: "Okay."

**

TRANSMODIAR: "What're you up to right now?"

ME: "I cannot tell you."

TRANSMODIAR: "What are you doing, burying a dead body?"

ME: "No."

TRANSMODIAR: "Then why can't you tell me?"

ME: "You said not to tell you."

TRANSMODIAR: "Are you taking a bath right now?!"

ME: "You said you didn't want to know! Why are you asking?"

TRANSMODIAR: "I'm sure you're doing SOMETHING ELSE as well!"

ME: "Yeah, I'm looking at flights to San Francisco."

TRANSMODIAR: "You visiting family or friends or something?"

ME: "No, I was thinking I'd go for a week, see the sights and write in landmarks and geographical references for the SLIDERS REBORN scripts."

TRANSMODIAR: "You are out of your god-damn mind."

ME: "What?"

TRANSMODIAR: "Don't fly to San Francisco for fanfic! Just use Google Maps!"

ME: "Oh, okay. I suppose you're right."

TRANSMODIAR: "Are you still in the bath?"

ME: "You said not to tell you. Why are you asking?"

I dunno. I feel like the format requires that he and I aren't actually in physical proximity, just texting each other.

....... anybody want a DVD box set of SLIDERS: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON?

After the Mill Creek envelopes for the discs proved inadequate, I moved the discs into a book shaped disc album. I guess I could swap out the Mill Creek discs of Season 3 and replace them with the Universal release with its (marginally) better video quality (as the Mill Creek discs were even more compressed than the Universal release to fit the episodes into fewer discarded). If I ever want to watch “The Guardian,” “Double Cross” or “Murder Most Foul,” it’d be less blurry than what I had before.

Anybody want the Mill Creek Season 3 discs?

And now for Tech Talk with Quinn Mallory:

I remember the exact moment I gave up on the Moto G5 Plus smartphone. I was making a two hour drive down an express highway when the podcast player went dead while Google Maps was guiding me towards my destination. Watching the road, I swiped my finger across the fingerprint sensor to switch to the previous foreground app -- the podcasts -- so that I could hit play. In mid-switch, the phone proceeded to shut down Google Maps. I think what it came down to was that 2 GB of RAM just wasn't enough for Android to multitask anymore. The phone had been lagging a bit until an Android update at which point the Moto G5 Plus dispensed with freezing, unresponsive UI performances by simply quitting apps.

So I sold it. That and fifty bucks bought me a refurbished, slightly scuffed, mildly chipped Samsung S7 with 4 GB of RAM and state of the art flagship hardware from 2016. It's pretty good and the camera might liberate me from carrying DSLRs and camcorders going forward -- but a few things alarm me.

The first is that the phone has a subtly curved edge around the screen. The result is that tempered glass protectors either don't attach securely or attach but create distortions of air pockets down the sides of the screen. The only workable screen protection so far has been a gel-film protector that adheres to the screen with liquid and can curve to fit the rounded surface -- and such protectors guard against scratches but offer no real drop protection. I didn't realize the phone lacked a flat design suited to tempered glass and I've dropped my phone a lot over the years.

I recall shattering the screen on my Samsung Galaxy S3 twice in my pre-tempered glass days. However, it occurs to me that the S3 used Gorilla Glass 2. The S7 uses Gorilla Glass 4 which is estimated to be six times less breakable and scratchable than Gorilla Glass 2, so maybe the stronger glass, my protective film and the TPU case can handle my life. That said, I've used gel-film with liquid installs on my tablets. They adhere permanently to flat surfaces. On the curved surfaces like the rears of my tablets, however, they've always peeled loose over time. The curve on the S7 screen is so subtle and slight I didn't notice it until I tried to apply a tempered glass protector, though -- maybe it'll hold.

If it peels off, however, I'll have to turn to my last resort -- a liquid screen protection fluid that supposedly applies a microscopic coating to glass to guard against scuffs and scratches and (in theory) drops. But for all I know, it could be mineral water in those tubes.

The other thing that weirds me out is how crazy heated the phone got. My Moto G5 Plus had a metal backing (on a plastic frame) and always felt cool; the S7 got really warm as it was downloading Google Play app updates. Eventually, I found the battery settings and switched on the CPU limiter. I also turned off the Always On display because I'm nervous that that's a recipe for burn-in. The screen offers a 1440 resolution but lets you dial it down to 1080 and 720. I set the screen to 720 pixels wide and... couldn't tell the difference between that and the highest resolution, so I left it on low if only to take it easy on the graphics processor. The phone has cooled now, but for an hour or so, I was wondering if it would burst into flame like a Note 7.

I had to connect the phone to my computer to activate immersive mode and hide the status bar to prevent burn-in. Samsung has kindly opened up themes for their Android build, so I chose a Google Pixel style theme and installed Nova Launcher which mimics the Google app launcher and also installed Google Messages, Calendar and Clock. The software looks like a Pixel now.

Informant, do you have the option of changing the resolution on your Note and can you tell the difference?

I'm sorry you've not been well. What's going on with you? And your brother? And your father? And your curse of MacGyver?

**

I suspect that the lower resolution is a problem on a Note 8 because you have a 6.3 inch screen. I have a 5.1 inch screen and 720 pixels is still a lot of pixels.

Do you have any status bar burn in? Or burn in from the Always On Display and the navigation bar? Or is the slight pixel shifting that Samsung programmed in adequate for preventing burn in? The S7 uses capacitive buttons without a navigation bar, but I've disabled Always On and the status bar.

It's pretty great to have 4GB of RAM. I'd accepted that my Moto G5 Plus needed me to run the lite versions of Facebook and Messenger and constantly having to clear the RAM and close all apps and restart at night so it'd be smoother in the morning. The S7 doesn't need any kind of maintenance that can't be set and forgotten.

And now, for Tech Talk with Quinn Mallory:

I adore coffee and have always been fascinated by Keurig coffee pod machines. I have, however, refused to buy one because the cost of coffee pods versus the cost of drip coffee was unworkable -- although, I confess, I ruin a LOT of coffee. Sometimes, the paper filters collapse inside the coffeemaker and the brew is filled with grounds. Sometimes, I miscalculate the water to ground coffee ratio and end up with too strong or too weak a result.

And, when wandering through my thrift store, I spotted a Keurig machine for $20 which was far more tenable than the $120 or so cost of most of these machines. So I bought it and bought some refillable pods as well (four for $15).

I got home and was horrified to discover: the reason this machine cost $20 is because it was made when Keurig tried to prevent customers from using coffee pods from manufacturers who hadn't paid Keurig a licensing fee by including a scanner that looks for infrared ink on licensed pods. The machine will refuse to begin the brewing process if the scanner detects a pod without the infrared ink made by a company that didn't want to pay Keurig licensing fees for putting hot water through ground coffee.

I grimly refunded my refillable pods and bought a single official Keurig refillable pod for an insane $20 -- if only to make sure the machine worked. It did. But this annoyed me so much that I started looking at hacks to overturn the DRM restrictions. Some hacks involved buying a licensed pod and taping the infrared inked label to the scanner lens, some involved using neon marker or neon-coloured adhesive paper and a clip.

One involved disassembling the machine, locating the cable that sent data from the scanner to the processor and cutting it to permanently bypass the DRM protocol. I felt Quinn Mallory would do the last one, so I took apart my Keurig 2.0, cut the wire and promptly lost the screws needed to reassemble it and spent some time on my hands and knees locating them on the floor.

Anyway. I guess I'll go run some descaling solution through the machine. Who knows what's been through it?

I’ve read some reports that the magnet can damage the internal carafe sensor, so I decided to hold off. I did disassemble the upper lid on the K400 and found the two wires that, if looped together, tricks the machine into thinking that a carafe is present. However, I didn’t have a wire stripper on hand.

I also don’t buy pod-packed coffee, only reusable pods, and I’ve yet to find a locally sold carafe-sized pod. The official reusable k-cup only brews 12 ounces of coffee at the most. And the only locked function in the menu that I see is for brewing carafes. Also, the Keurig 2.0 carafe is an insane $40 and buying one reusable coffee pod for $20 was already pushing it.

I think, now that the machine is unlocked, I’ll buy the four-pack of refillable coffee pods for $15 and if I need to make coffee for guests, I’ll pre-load those pods and load them in one after another.

My machine allows me to brew 16 ounces, but I see what's going on here. Because, pre-wirecutting, the Keurig 2.0 didn't accept common refillable pods, I bought the official Keurig My K-Cup Universal Reusable Filter ( https://www.keurig.ca/accessories/my-k- … sal-filter ). This reusable pod has about twice the height of a standard coffee pod and when you insert it into the pod basket, it lowers the latch and retracts needle (which a normal-sized pod won't do). The Keurig 2.0 detects that a larger-than-normal pod has been inserted and unlocks the 16 ounce option.

I bought four of the standard size, non-Keurig brand refillable pods today and put one in. These pods aren't long enough to trigger the latch and retract the needle, so the machine detects a normal size pod and limits you to 10 ounces. However, I tried putting the official pod in but without the lid, instead dropping in the smaller pod into the larger pod casing. This unlocked the 16 ounce brew option as well.

Anyway. If you've got a magnet in there doing the same thing as the larger pod, I think you're fine. As for me -- even my largest travel mug can only hold 10 ounces of coffee with enough space left for cream.

I made mini hamburgers for lunch today following a White Castle-esque recipe. I actually do order mini hamburgers in restaurants sometimes so that I can hear someone's voice saying, "Sliders." I've always joked that SLIDERS should be revived with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo running a hamburger joint that specializes in miniature burgers.

Every once in awhile, I come across a product that I must not only appreciate for my own use but also share with you all for its utlity and revolutionary design. This is not one of those times.

Recently, my sister fried my laptop. She was visiting and she plugged a space heater into the same power bar I use to fuel a 10-year-old laptop I keep plugged into a TV to run streaming services and play local files off an external hard drive. The heater blew the circuit and the laptop no longer powers on. She offered to replace it, but I mentally began calculating how much of her property I’ve destroyed during our association and it seemed best to stop thinking about it while I was not ahead.

I bought a used Chromecast, thinking I could use it with my streaming services and periodically copy locally stored video files to my iPad and stream them to the living room TV. But I was disappointed to find that some video files like my AVI backups of SLIDERS DVDs and my MKV conversions of STAR WARS fan restorations didn’t stream well; the video apps couldn’t handle decoding and casting the file to the TV. I bought a refurbished blu-ray player only to find it couldn’t decode those video files either (despite loudly advertising its ability to do so on the box).

I went to the tech store and began looking at racks and racks of open box Android TV boxes. “These are all garbage,” a salesman told me miserably, gesturing at a small wall of returned, open-box Android boxes. “They are too slow to run streaming services and there is no real market for good ones; most people just buy a smart TV.” My TV, however, is just a 40 inch monitor bought eight years ago.

Anyway. I figured that even a low-powered Android box could handle local video playback. I brought one home, plugged it into the TV — and there’s something quite surreal about seeing Android 4.4, an ancient phone interface stretched to tablet size and then stretched again to fill a TV screen. This MyGica ATV380 is. so underpowered that it lagged and froze until I uninstalled most of the built-in apps. The machine encourages you to use with a remote controller’s arrow keys to move a cursor about a touchscreen interface that’s on a TV. I had to plug in a wireless mouse instead. The built-in video player couldn’t decode a lot of my video formats.

The best that can be said: the manufacturer left the Android interface under their launcher untouched, so I was able to install a personalized homescreen, a file explorer and a video app with the right codecs. It definitely doesn’t have the power to stream Netflix well, and even if it did, it’d be the Android app blown up to a TV screen with the need to use a mouse. But it can play locally stored 1080p video files; the Chromecast can handle screening services and the blu-ray player — well, I only have like seven blu-rays and a bunch of DVDs. And I bought everything used or refurbished, so it cost under a hundred bucks.

Anyway. Android TV boxes are stupid. Android is for phones and the software and hardware on these devices are a joke. I think most people should just get a wifi-enabled TV with streaming service apps built in as well as USB ports for hard drives.

I thought about getting a Roku streaming stick or box, but I couldn't tell if they could access a USB drive and a used Chromecast was cheaper. My niece has a Samsung TV and the Netflix interface is so slow and laggy and the wifi hardware so poor that she just uses the XBox X to play video files and streaming services.

As a kid, I had one box to handle TV signals and one VHS player. Now I have a blu-ray player that's very good at playing blu-ray and DVD but awkward or non-functional for playing video files and it has no streaming function. I have a Chromecast that's very good for streaming services if accompanied by a tablet but useless for locally stored video. And I have an Android TV that should technically be good for any Android app, streaming or not, but it kept lagging and freezing just trying to download and install apps. The only thing it can do well is play locally stored video files.

I admit that the user experience doesn't really matter so long as the video files play, but make no mistake, this Android box is a piece of crap and the salesman told me that it was the cheapest of the three he hated least. I wonder if there exists a machine that can do blu-ray/DVD and also streaming services and also play locally stored videos and there probably is, but it also probably costs more than $100 whereas these three items cost about $80.

Samsung is urgently exiting the blu-ray player market:
https://www.denofgeek.com/us/culture/27 … ay-players

Hmm. Well, I have to say, the prices on blu-ray players are INSANE. When my sister fried the living room laptop I used as a home theatre system for the TV, I was looking around. A new blu-ray player at Best Buy cost $225 USD. I had to go searching with refurbished stores and open box models before finding a sensible $35 USD model (open box with no wifi functions). I only have a few blu-rays (Seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5 of CHUCK, Seasons 8 - 9 of SMALLVILLE). And I don't see myself buying any more. The average new release on blu-ray disc at Best Buy starts at $25 USD.

In an era of all-you-can-view subscriptions with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and in a market of $40 Chromecasts and Rokus, it doesn't make financial sense to spend $25 on a single home viewing experience or more than $60 on blu-ray players that you can only count on to play blu-ray and DVD. Sony's latest $250 wifi blu-ray players only promise support for Netflix and YouTube. It's terrible value for the money.

I bought a new TV. I’m starting to realize that as TVs get better, SLIDERS DVDs look worse. The first TV that I ever bought was a 32-inch 720p Samsung with gorgeous backlighting, saturation and black levels. SLIDERS looked solid with my PS3 upscaling the video to 720p thanks to the great contrast and colour.

A couple years later, my mother’s old CRT TV blew, so I gave her my Samsung and graduated to a 39-inch 1080p Dynex (a generic Best Buy brand). After a bit of calibration, it was alright — the higher resolution gave it a bit of a boost over the Samsung, but the black levels were a step down, the colours less rich, and SLIDERS on this screen looked a bit fuzzier, not because the TV was poorer but because the larger scale showed the flaws more.

And now, eight years later, my mother’s insistence on leaving her TV switched on and paused while she goes out for the day has led to hideous burn-in and backlight damage. In contrast, my 39-inch Dynex looks perfect. I gave her my 39-inch and bought a new RCA 55-inch 4K TV.

It’s okay. I was a bit alarmed at first at an odd cloud of grayness over any dark images on the TV — it’s LED clouding — but lightly brushing against the clouding with a microfiber cloth removed it completely. More disturbing were the various patches of darkness against white images, but the THX calibration tool let me reduce it from distracting to unremarkable with backlight and contrast adjustments. It's a low-quality, budget TV, but with some calibration, the results are good: the colour and the contrast are amazing.

The darkened libraries of SHADOWHUNTERS look dark while still being able to see the individual shelves and tables; the sands of STAR WARS look sun-drenched but never oversaturated. It was neat to realize that this high contrast, perfectly lit image might not be the filmmakers' intention and to set the enhancements to a midpoint.

Unfortunately, regardless of the settings, my SLIDERS DVDs look ghastly on this modern TV. There are jagged edges around all the people against the backgrounds. I switched off the dynamic contrast enhancements and lowered the sharpness and the result was another fuzzy, ugly image. The image gives the impression of watching the episode through the wrong pair of glasses. What was acceptable as standard definition upscaled on a 39-inch screen is unwatchable on a 55-inch screen.

It’s unfortunate. SLIDERS is no longer something I want to watch on my TV; it’s become a show to watch on a 10-inch tablet because it looks so awful in the home theatre. It’s kind of astonishing to me that the standard definition DEEP SPACE NINE looks adequate on my TV while SLIDERS, likely produced on similar materials, is a visual abomination and not because of the film or video quality but because Mill Creek overcompressed the episodes on too few discs.

DEEP SPACE NINE's standard definition detail can be upscaled; the SLIDERS DVDs have no detail to upscale. Fourteen discs is too few for 88 episodes; it should have been a minimum of 24 discs.

I'd like you to put a Mill Creek SLIDERS disc through your Xbox One and smart TV and let us know the results. I'm sure they're terrible. You can't upscale standard definition detail to faux high def without having some SD level detail to upscale in the first place.

To our Texans.  Meet JRD this month

https://texaspinball.com/tpf/mordor-is-a-long-way-away/

https://www.visitfrisco.com/media/cvb-r … t/tpf2019/

For reasons I can't remember relating to Razor Gillette from "The Young and the Relentless," the Gillette commercial about toxic masculinity, and the hilarious outcry against it, I wrote up a cost assessment of various shaving products I've tried, then forgot all about it until I was going through my scratchpad app today. The response to the Gillette commercial from various angry men feeling threatened by the idea that bullying and sexual harassment are bad led to the hashtag #getwokegobroke, a complaint that Gillette products are too expensive.

I think I wrote the below to sort out how much Gillette products cost each year, but I can't recall how it relates to the Razor character at all.

Rotary Electric Razor (Philips)
I've found that rotary razors with their rounded, rotating blades, provide at best a perfunctory shave. They leave the face with a low level of stubble and the results are that the user goes from unshaven to slightly less unshaven. The only point on which I can recommend them: they don't irritate sensitive skin and as their ineffectual nature makes them exceedingly gentle. I keep a cheap $10 in my desk at work, though, so that if I need to go from my office to an evening event and want to look morning-fresh, I quickly can go from unshaven to slightly less unshaven.

You'd spend about $40 a year on replacing the shaving head annually plus the $60 - $140 for a long lasting shaving unit itself.

Gillette Disposable Sensor Dual Blade Razors
These manual cartridge razors are an adequate single use product. Most of these lack modern razor technology: lubrication strips, pivoting razor heads to adjust to the contours of the face or microfins to press the skin down smooth for the blades. They provide one shave, but after that, the blades are dull and shouldn't be used again or they'll tug at facial hair and cut up the skin.

You'd spend about $365 a year on this as these single use blades amount to about $1 each.

Gillette Fusion5 ProShield Power Razor
This manual cartridge razor is the pinnacle of shaving technology: detachable razor heads for easy replacement. Dual lubrication strips. A pivoting shaving head that goes left/right and up/down for all contours of the face. A comb to catch hair and direct it into the blades. A motor in the handle that creates soft pulses in the razor head to increase cutting and sooth the face. And five blades, allowing an initial blade to catch the hair, the subsequent blade to cut it, and for the process to repeated three times where a dual blade razor does it once.

It's too big. I shave best by raking the razor against the grain of my facial hair, creating the smoothest results. But a five blade razor is so large that I can't use it to shave the skin between my mouth and nose; the head occupies the entire surface area of the space I'm trying to shave. I have no space to move it.

The Fusion5 includes a "precision trimmer," a single blade on the edge, but it keeps giving me shaving cuts because the trimmer has no lubricating strip or microfins. The micropulses ensure a gentle touch to the razor, but unless I want to grow a mustache (and I don't), the Fusion5 is too big.

You'd spend about $45 a year on replacement blades plus $15 for the handle (which comes with one blade).

Gillette Triple Blade Safety Razor
The company actually sells a wide range of disposable and cartridge-detachable triple bladed razors. The gentlest is the disposable Sensor 3 Sensitive. The sharpest is the cartridge-replaceable Mach 3. The Sensor 3 Sensitive has a stronger lubricration strip; the Mach 3 lasts longer and has sharper blades, and three blade razors work best for me in being small enough to maneuver in smaller spots on my face and offering a close shave.

However, in order to make the best use of these triple blades, it requires small, precise blade strokes to produce a stubble free face. The Sensor 3 stays sharp for about 10 shaves per blade and the Mach 3 for 15, so it's important to have a regular supply as continuing to use dulled razors leads to cuts. The sharpness of the blades and the lubricating strips allow shavers to use cheap shaving foam instead of pricier lubricating gels; the skin needs a protective layer of foam, but the blades don't need much extra layering to glide across the face.

You'd spend about $45 a year on the Sensor 3 Sensitive razors or about $40 a year on the Mach 3 refill cartridges plus $8 for the handle (which comes with three blades).

Gillette Shaving Foam
It works great with manual razors, it's super inexpensive at $3 -5 a can every three months (so, $20 a year) and it's very reliable.

Braun Series 3 Electric Foil Shaver
A foil shaver has motorized blades going left and right instead of in the circles of a rotary shaver. The Series 3 is one of the cheapest, and it's pleasingly effective, especially when combined with shaving gel. It provides a very close shave that's just as clean as triple blade manual shaving and the shaving head is advertised to last for a year and a half. It's much faster than manual shaving, but it's harsher on the skin than manual and rotary razors. To avoid skin irritation, it needs to be combined with high lubrication shaving gel; the light and inexpensive foam that works fine with manual blades don't provide enough protection. Definitely the most convenient option.

You'd spend $17 a year on a replacement head (really $25 - $26 over eighteen months) and $40 for the shaving unit.

Gillette Fusion5 Shaving Gel
This gel is thicker than Gillette's foam and it adds a high level of cushioning that Gillette's blades don't really need, but Braun's electric foil shavers definitely do. There's a great cooling effect to offset any irritation from an electric razor. It's $4 a can for about a two month supply, so that's $24 a year.

I prefer to use triple bladed razors and foam, but I generally can't. I'm always in a hurry on weekday mornings, so I use the electric foil (not Gillette) and depend on the gel (Gillette) to protect my skin from the foil blades. Spending two minutes on shaving instead of five gets me out the door sooner and helps me beat the traffic.

So I know we talked a bit about my wife and me trying to have a kid.  Well, I wanted to announce that last week, she gave birth to our daughter!  Just wanted you guys to know that 1) so you didn't feel so bad about what happened before and 2) so you won't worry if I'm not here as much in the next few weeks

Awesome!  Is she named Wade or Quinn?

It's been really great so far!  I think we lucked out with a pretty great little girl.

And I tried to sell Quinn really hard, but I was vetoed

The great thing about sliders is so many unisex names.  Quinn. Wade.  Tracy. 

Mallory.

Congrats!  Just read this obviously.

Sounds like Ebay didn't have much patience with the seller.  The seller definitely seems pretty obnoxious about it all but I could imagine it was frustrating for her if their listing tool provided the wrong spec and she assumed it to be correct.

You'd think they would have at least warned her that if she didn't provide the return label, she'd lose the full value of the sale.

She definitely handled it poorly but ebay could have at least given her a heads up as not everyone has the funds to lose a sale like that.

And Ebay should make it clear with their list tool, especially for products that can have variants, that the specs might not match and the seller should review them.

Sorry to hear that.  Some people are entirely unreasonable.  And though it's not common to run into them, you never know what you're gonna get with these sorts of things.

Dinner with one of my favourite actresses over Zoom! Wait, hang on. Recently had to fire someone. Everyone got promoted. Dinner with my favourite actress over Zoom!

ELLIE: "Dinner over Zoom! Is this new for you?"

IB: "It is indeed, but I take comfort in knowing that we'll have exactly the amount of physical contact that we do when we eat together in person."

ELLIE: "Haha!"

IB: "Oh, I have to ask you -- have you recently joined a -- " (makes air quotes) " -- pyramid scheme, self-actualization program, potentiality unlocking process or anything that might be construed as a cult?"

ELLIE: (air quotes) "No. I've just been working on my self-tapes. Did one today!"

IB: "Oh thank God. Otherwise, I'd think that dress was for my benefit."

ELLIE: "Aren't you wearing a suit right now?"

IB: "It's a sport jacket!"

ELLIE: "I am so sorry for not knowing the difference as I can tell that really matters to you."

IB: "It makes me feel like we're in a restaurant instead of eating delivered meals."

ELLIE: "Yeah, always use the environment to assume your role."

IB: "Oh, Jezebel tells me that all my favourite actresses will be deprived of their usual botox injections and fillers and that the lines in their faces will start to deepen and their faces will be more sunken. Are you experiencing any of that and do you need sympathy?"

ELLiE: "No. And no. I figure you'll come up with some magic skin care routine for me."

IB: "Thank you, I will take you off the list, Ellie."

ELLIE: "Who's Ellie?"

IB: "Oh, I just have to call you that once for the transcript so Slider_Quinn21 won't know who you are and have to guess."

ELLIE: "Is this about that TV show you like? The one about time travellers?"

IB: "You KNOW it's not about time travellers! I think you say that just to annoy me a little."

ELLIE: "Yeah!" (snickering) "But your niece and I notice it annoys you a lot."

An actress knows who I am!  I'm not even going to try and guess now!

Grizzlor? What's Nicole Eggert like? I've always wondered.

**

Found a new case for the Samsung S7! Very thin. So thin that it doesn't intrude on a tempered glass protector and doesn't peel it off, so I got a new set of tempered glass protectors and the first of this new batch has lasted five weeks and counting. Since I could be sure to keep the phone intact through drops and falls now, I got a battery replacement and now have to keep the Samsung S7 for the next three years to justify the expense. Locked in now!

**

I haven't been to the dentist in seven months as they shut down when my April cleaning was scheduled and rebooked to August. Six weeks ago, I looked in the mirror and was shocked by the savage brown stains across my front teeth. And with my bottom teeth, surfaces unmarred by stains were also disturbingly translucent as though the enamel and dentin had eroded from too much citric acid in soda. I was horrified. I put on some Crest Whitestrips and I could see they would slowly remove the stains over the course of a 10 day treatment, but stain removal wouldn't address how my bottom teeth were rapidly becoming transparent.

I switched from an anticavity toothpaste to an enamel rebuilding toothpaste and switched from an antibacterial mouthwash to a fluoride mouthwash. Neither promised to do anything other than "reharden" worn enamel and were advertised as preventatives for translucent teeth. I switched to drinking my sugarless fruit sodas (and their citric acid) from a steel straw, rinsed my mouth with mouthwash after every cup of coffee -- but again, all this was to prevent what had already happened.

Desperate and six weeks from my dental appointment, I began taking collagen, calcium, magnesium and vitamin D supplements which were supposedly helpful for remineralizing teeth on dubious health and lifestyle websites. It was a long shot as most dentists' websites declare that one enamel is eroded, it can't be restored.

But I've been taking the pills for six weeks and looking now -- my teeth are recovering. I have a dental appointment for tomorrow, and as of today, the translucency in my teeth has filled back in by about half. The translucency isn't even visible unless I'm right against the mirror.

I'm always very suspicious of wellness articles written by people who can only offer anecdotal evidence and this single experience is no less anecdotal, but it's worked out. Hopefully, with a few more months of ongoing supplementation and fluoride use, my teeth will be fully restored.

And now for Tech Talk, with Quinn Mallory:

The charging port in my Samsung S7 phone has been a bit loose, but rather than fixing it, I started looking online for a wireless charging stand. But I decided to check in at the local dollar store where they were selling $3 wireless charging pads and I decided to go with that even if it would take over three hours to recharge from 0 - 100. It charges while I sleep, so it doesn't need to be fast.

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My iPad battery has been less than awesome lately for watching Netflix in bed or while doing otherwise-tedious data entry at my desktop workstation. But rather than replace the battery, I decided to get a couple 10 feet iPad charging cables, also from the dollar store, so that the tablet can just stay plugged it when being used in places where it's at maximum brightness for hours.

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My Samsung Chromebook 3 came with an awful TN monitor that was grainy and washed and distorted at even the slightest angle. I ordered a higher contrast IPS screen and it looks the same no matter what angle at which you view the monitor. Except the first one I got had white spots across any black backgrounds. I reported it and their customer service had me package up the screen and send it back to them in exchange for a new one. Which also had white spots across any black background. I reported it and their customer service had me package up the screen and send it back to them in exchange for a new one. Which had blue puddles across any white background. I reported it and their customer service had me package up the screen and send it back to them in exchange for a new one. Which had gray puddles across the lower half of the screen. I reported it and their customer service had me package up the screen and send it back to them in exchange for a new one. Which had white spots across any black colours. I reported it and their customer service had me package up the screen and send it back to them in exchange for a new one. Which was finally okay oh my God I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life exchanging this screen.

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My mother informed me that she missed being able to play DVDs on her TV because even though she has a home theatre PC running Windows 10 on her television with a wireless mouse and remote for streaming services, she has a small collection of discs. I gave her my external DVD drive for her PC and then started looking for a replacement. There were a lot of cheap external DVD drives on the market for the occasional occasion when I need to burn or open a disc -- but I decided to get myself an external blu-ray drive that can also write data to blank blu-rays so that I would never, ever, ever have to upgrade my optical drive again.

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RAM is going on sale. My 'gaming' laptop originally came with 4GB of RAM (dear God) and a spinning hard disk (which made it a bit hopeless for gaming even if I really bought it for photo and video editing). I opened it up and upgraded the internals to 8GB of RAM and a small 128GB NVMe solid state drive (while leaving the spinning drive in for storage). I'm wondering about buying another 8GB of RAM to boost the computer to 16GB for a slightly smoother Adobe Creative Suite experience, but I'm also remembering how intricate and annoying it was to open up the laptop to get the new drive and memory in and how if I'm going to go through that again, I might as well bring the RAM up to 32GB and never have to open up the laptop again.